


Why were you digging (what did you bury)

by Beleriandings



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mentions of Lucien - Freeform, headcanoning wildly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 06:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16258967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: Two years before the Mighty Nein find their way there, a different stranger finds her way into the Savalier wood.





	Why were you digging (what did you bury)

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a mostly baseless headcanon that occurred to me today that wouldn’t leave me alone until it was a fic. Title is from the song Like Real People Do by Hozier, which isn’t actually related much apart from in vague imagery but there we go.

_[Two years ago]_  
  


Strangers were rare, in the woods these days. So rare that sometimes, when they wandered into the woods unaware of the darkness that swarmed there, Caduceus wasn’t always fast enough to reach them in time.

In this particular case, he had cut it rather fine, he had to admit. The visitor seemed, he noted, to be holding their own better than most. Still, they had apparently been wounded in the fight - he could smell the blood and the fear, and the simmering anger of the living cancer that gripped the forest, from half a mile before he even caught sight of movement between the trees.

“Oh, dear. I’m sorry about that” said Caduceus as his final sunburst of radiant light dissipated amongst the trees, and the skeletal bear slumped finally against the roots of a tree. He pushed the corpse to one side, rolling it to the forest floor in a little burst of pine needles to allow its intended victim to peer out from between the ferns, in the little hollow where they had been cornered. “That’ll happen, sometimes.” 

He laid a hand on the dead creature, preparing to decompose its body. Though not before noting the marks upon it; strange, twisting black veins, its eyes running with dark blood he wasn’t even certain it should have. The marks of a magic he didn’t know, and didn’t want to.

He elected to ignore it, for now; if the person he had saved was more dangerous than the creature, then that was a problem for later.

And so he let the the familiar decomposition spell run down his fingers and take root in the dead flesh; it wasn’t hard, as the bear was already half decayed. Still, he watched carefully to make sure as the mutated, twisted skin and muscle and knotted sinew began to shrivel, drawing back to expose more of the pale bone beneath. But only for a moment, before mould and fungus began covering it in bright-coloured down, pale pink mushrooms sprouting as the person he had saved watched with unblinking eyes.

After a few more moments, Caduceus was standing over nothing but a pile of rich compost, already blending in with the forest undergrowth. That was good; the corruption would still carry on, and spread, but at least he had done a little to halt its progress, and put one of the creatures its curse had claimed to some final rest.

That left the newcomer. At first, he had caught sight of an elf woman with dark skin and short-cropped dark hair amongst the trees. But now, a different face met his gaze. She peered up at him as he offered down a hand to help her up, with wide yellow eyes in a black-furred face. Her ears were pierced with gold rings and laid warily back flat against a catlike skull; a tabaxi, he thought. That was interesting. Tabaxi were rare enough here that Caduceus had only met a handful before, decades ago, and didn’t feel as able to read the subtleties of expression in them as he did in most people.

Nevertheless, he could see her mind working as she touched her face gingerly with a paw, and he watched as two distinct facts – by his best guess – clicked into place in her mind. The first, that during the fight with the bear she had lost the illusion spell that had disguised her as the elf woman he had first seen her as. And the second, that the paw she raised to her head came away sticky with blood. She licked at it distractedly, almost as though seeking comfort in the motion, her tail twitching a little as she rose to her feet without taking his proffered hand. Her eyes were wary and piercing and fixed on him.

Those eyes told Caduceus another tale; it was a very, very familiar one, for someone who had lived the life he had.

“Hello.” He tilted his head, offering his hand to her again; this time though, he let healing energy pool there, though he still waited for permission before touching her. She looked so wary that she might just attack him if he tried. People did that, sometimes.

Mostly she just looked confused, though. “You look like you need some help” he explained. He smiled gently at her, as an afterthought. “Please don’t be afraid.”

She nodded, hesitantly, fur still bristling at the back of her neck. Her eyes never left him, as she extended her paw-like hand between them and held it open, in silent permission. He let the healing flow into her, and her posture relaxed slightly, as people did when they were less burdened by pain. Though not wholly; she was still strung tense as a bowstring, eyes watching him, unblinking.

And there was still that _look_ in her eyes. The familiar one, that was.

It wasn’t often, these days, that anyone from the town – or anyone at all actually – tried to risk passage through the Savalier wood. Nor was it often that Caduceus left the Blooming Grove. At least not physically; sometimes the Wildmother plucked his dreaming consciousness up like a flower woven into her hair, planting seeds in the ground that would one day draw him eastwards. When the time came. He had a vague idea how it would happen, too; there were people who would come to find him. He hadn’t seen their faces in his dreams, but he had felt the measure of them, could hear their voices a little on the cusp of wakefulness, or even in the echoes of the sounds of the forest when he listened hard enough.

That was still in the future though; he was reasonably certain that this person was not one of the ones he was waiting for.

Yet still he recognised the look in her eyes, from the people who had used to come to him. There were two reasons, usually, or two types of people. First there were the runaways. Shady Creek Run had more runaways than it had people who lived there, it seemed sometimes. The place seemed to attract them, or perhaps to produce them, and sometimes they would stumble hapless into the woods.

The second type were people who had lost someone. Those came more rarely now, but he would sit with them, and drink tea, and talk if they wanted to, and be quiet if they didn’t. He knew the look of someone who was grieving a loved one, knew it almost better than he remembered the faces of his family, who had left so many seasons ago he had almost lost count.

The two types of people, he had also found, very often overlapped. And he thought that perhaps that was the case now. This tabaxi had that look about her.

“I’m Caduceus Clay” he said, as his healing spell finished. “Pleased to meet you.”

She said nothing, so he smiled, again. “I don’t mean to make assumptions, but whatever it is you’re running from - ” he ignored her wince that proved his suspicions at least half correct, “- it’s not me. You’re safe, here. Or you can be.”

She stared at him for a long, long time. He sensed some magic in that stare, but he general feeling was that if people wanted to use magic to check the truth of what he said, then that was their business; it wasn’t as if he had anything to hide.

Either way, she must have judged him not a threat, for at long last, she opened her mouth and spoke. “I am…Cree.” Her voice was a little husky, cracked as though with disuse. Or tears, perhaps. It was usually one of those two. But her next words came out more abrupt, clipped and wary. “Who are you? What is your business here?”

“I live here. Or, not exactly _here_ , but close enough.” He gestured calmly at the mound of mulch where the half-skeletal bear had been. “Usually, I make sure that the dead things around these parts stay in the ground.” He watched as he she twitched again in renewed alarm, a spell already beginning to glow at her fingers, crackling violet energy that set his teeth on edge. That was interesting, maybe, but he put it away to think about properly later. He could sense nothing undead here, and that was good enough for the moment. So he let his staff fall to the crook of his arm, raising his hands with a placid smile. “But that doesn’t include you, I think.”  

“No” she said curtly, her face immediately switching back to impassivity, the magic dissipating from her paws. She stilled her tail, drew herself up just a little. “Thank you for your aid. I will leave this forest now.”

“Oh. That’s soon” he said. “Do you know where you’re going?”

She hesitated. “I…came through the Run, and took refuge here” she said. Well, it seemed he had guessed correctly. “But this forest seems like no refuge at all.” Suddenly, she looked grief-stricken once more, her words tumbling out too fast, cracked and jumbled shards of glass. “I…don’t know what else to _do_. My…purpose… I don’t know what it is, now.”

“Sometimes it can feel like that, when you’ve lost someone” he tried, nodding. Immediately, her eyes snapped upwards to meet his, once again wary, but also – despite herself, he thought – curiously hopeful. Maybe she hadn’t realised how much she wanted someone to understand, though without telling them herself. It was often that way. He smiled. “Luckily, I’ve got just the thing.”

“…You can…” her eyes stared fixedly at him, tail beginning to lash in agitated excitement. “You can…help me?”

“I think so” he said. “Come back to my garden, and we can talk about it. Or not. But it’s safe and quiet, there.”

 

And that was how Caduceus brought a rather lost-looking Cree into the Blooming Grove after him. She went on quiet feet, her golden eyes darting in surprise as they entered the garden, and he set about brewing two cups of tea as she sat on a mossy stone amidst the graves. He kept watching her from the house as he went in to get the heavy, copper kettle from the fire; while she didn’t think that he could see her, he watched her paw at a butterfly that fluttered past, and then turn to running her paw through the purple anemones that grew on one of the newer graves. Back and forth and back and forth, making the stems sway, apparently lost in thought.

He allowed her another few minutes alone before he came back outside with the tea. They sat and watched the steam curl up for a few minutes, and Caduceus drank from his cup. Eventually, Cree drank too, a little of the tension ebbing from her shoulders as she did so.

“I…left him in the ground” she said, at long, long last. “I…did not know what else to do. It all went wrong.” She made a fist, in frustration. “Lucien… he was not _supposed_ to die. I mean, I had always known there was a _chance_ , we all knew, but he was so…” she gestured with her free hand, desperate and searching, voice hollow. “He was… he was more than just flesh and blood. He was the best of us. I never thought…” she looked up at him, and Caduceus saw tears at the corners of her eyes, but they did not fall, her voice recklessly unwavering. “I keep wondering if there was some way in which we acted, if there was some way I could have done more. If I could have saved him. …I think I will wonder that for the rest of my days.”

Caduceus nodded. “Many, many people do.” He took a sip of tea. “The answer is usually no. But that doesn’t make it easier.” He looked her in the eye. “Time will, though.”

She scoffed. “You don’t know what happened.”

“Well, no. You didn’t tell me.”

“And I still won’t.”

He nodded, unfazed. “That’s alright. But, the specifics don’t really make a difference. Drink your tea. It’ll help.”

She frowned, staring down into her tea. “I shouldn’t even be telling you this” she muttered. “He wouldn’t want me to.”

“Well, you haven’t really told me much” Caduceus pointed out. “Besides. If he cared for you, he would want you to heal. And sometimes, talking heals.”

For the first time, Cree let out a bitter little peal of laughter, taking a long drink from her cup. “You really don’t know anything of Lucien. Or me. You don’t know what we shared.”

“No, and I don’t pretend to. But I know death, and how it changes those left behind. It’s one of the only constants in the world.”

She laughed again, more hollow this time. “….You know, I think Lucien would have had words to  say to you. About death, and other things.”

“I’m sure he would. But you are the one here with me, now.”

“I am nothing, compared to him.”

“Everyone’s something.”

She made another little skeptical sound in her throat and did not deign to answer this, but merely raised a hand to her head, cleaning the last of the blood from her fur with the back of it.

As she did, Caduceus silently refilled her teacup.

 

Cree stayed, until the sun began to lower on the horizon, turning the sky a riot of purples, oranges, and pinks in the gap where the sky was visible through the dark silhouettes of the trees.  

They had drifted into silence a while ago, and Caduceus was the first to break it, as he had noticed Cree beginning to grow restless again. “You want to leave. Do you know where you’ll go?”

“I will…go far from here” she said. “Away, as he commanded.”

“Do you know these lands?”

“Well enough to travel. I have people I can contact, too.”

He nodded. “Be careful in the woods. There are creatures like that bear, but the night makes their shadows run wilder.”

She nodded, eyes flashing in the gathering dark. “I’m prepared this time. I’m not one to make the same mistake twice.”

He nodded. “I believe you.”

And after not much longer, she was gone, a shadow melting into the pine branches as the night closed in around the cemetery.

**Author's Note:**

> HEY LISTEN THEY WERE BOTH IN/NEAR SHADY CREEK RUN AROUND THAT TIME, and that is the only justification I need for this interaction. Also, I sort of want to write a sequel to this given their meeting in Zadash and Cree finding out about "Lucien"'s second death/Molly's death, because the whole Tomb Takers plotline is fascinating to me and I kind of love Cree? Like, I know she's shady as hell and she has their blood but. I really like her, guys, and I hope she shows up again in canon at some point. (...I sort of have Theories but I digress...) So yeah, another chapter might happen in the future, but I need to think more about it. So in the meantime, have this.


End file.
